This program is a sound journey that traces the map of the influences crossed between the Old and the New World. Through three axes—song, battle, and dance—the repertoire explores how music served as a tool of faith, resistance, and survival during seven centuries of global transformations.

I. Faith and War in Medieval and Renaissance Europe

The concert opens with the voice of Marcabru, one of the first troubadours, whose song personifies the spirit of the Crusades. This European spirituality evolves toward the polyphony of Josquin des Prés, where the plea for peace (Dona nobis pacem) contrasts with the realism of the musical “battles” of Mateo Flecha and Pierre Attaingnant, who imitated the sounds of war with great rhythmic richness.

II. The Dialogue of Cultures in the New World

With the arrival in America, the European tradition encounters native and African languages and rhythms. The works of Gaspar Fernandes are the best example of this syncretism: villancicos that use Nahuatl or Afro-Hispanic dialects (such as Flecha’s Negrina or the Guaracha of Zéspedes). These pieces not only sought evangelization, but also welcomed the pulse of popular celebrations and the identity of mestizos and slaves.

III. The Spirituality of Slavery

Interspersed in the program, the Slave songs and Spirituals (such as Another man done gone or Indodana) act as a mirror of pain and hope. These melodies, born of the African diaspora, dialogue with the psalms of the Jewish tradition of Salomone Rossi and Sephardic prayers, reminding us that music has always been the refuge of oppressed communities.

IV. The Trujillo Codex: The Last Reflection

The concert concludes with pieces from the Trujillo Codex (ca. 1780), an exceptional document that collects the music of colonial Peru. The Tonada de El Chimo is a unique testimony, as it preserves the only musical trace of the Yunga language, from the Mochica / Yunga language (the Mochica language, chimú, yunga or yunka (muchik) is one of the languages spoken on the coast and part of the northern mountains of Peru), closing the circle of this dialogue between scholarship and oral tradition, between the European past and the birth of a new American identity.

—Jordi Savall, Bellaterra, February 2026